


the way the world ends

by superfluouskeys



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Gen, I'm Sorry, Rite of Tranquility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 12:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10571556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Between the conceptionAnd the creationBetween the emotionAnd the responseFalls the ShadowLife is very long.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this:
> 
> https://pheberoni.tumblr.com/post/43072355130/ow-i-hurt-myself
> 
> And my insurmountable need to suffer apparently.

_This is the way the world ends._

Five people rise to their feet in horror.  Two collapse to their knees.

One does not get up, and she does not fight back, and she does not run away.

 _Hawke_.

Everyone is screaming it, or no one is saying it.  It is at once deafeningly loud and deadly silent.  The world is at once impossibly dark and painfully bright.  She's being dragged away, eyes half-closed, head lolling to one side, feet dragging on the stone pavement.  There are templars everywhere, and no one can break through, and anyone who tries is struck down.

The next several days are unbridled chaos.  The city is swarming with unfamiliar faces in full armour and anyone who dares cross them should only be so lucky as to be publically flogged.  Then suddenly, not a week later, they are gone, as quickly as they had arrived, and the city is unnervingly quiet, and everyone is perhaps more afraid than when it was unbearably loud.

Leandra is inconsolable.  She is a woman unhinged.  Merrill cries.  Varric paces.  Isabela drinks.  Fenris doesn't move.

It is Aveline who finds out where she is, and Anders who reveals the way in to see her, but it is too late.

They knew it would be.  They know it has always been too late.  They imagine Hawke must have known it, too.  She always made light of the fact that if anyone ever managed to catch her, it wouldn't end well.

She knew.  They knew.  But this does not soften the blow.

"I thought you might come," she says, and all their hearts drop at once, for it isn't Hawke's voice, not anymore, because there is nothing behind it.  It is flat, lifeless.

It is tranquil.

"Hawke..."  It might as well have been all of them at once.

Varric and Isabela and Merrill are grasping at her arms, which hang limp and lifeless in their hands.  Aveline and Anders and Fenris are standing back, paralyzed, struggling to breathe, struggling to stand.

"But you shouldn't come again," Hawke continues, little more than a monotonous drone.  "I know you must be very unhappy.  I was unhappy as you are, before.  But that's all over now."

Merrill turns away--she can't bear to look anymore.  Varric bows his head to hide his tears, but he doesn't quite let go of her hand.  Isabela takes Hawke's face between her hands, violent and desperate.  "Come on, you've got to be in there still," she whispers fervently.

"There is nothing here but me, Isabela."

"No," Isabela growls.  "Not you.  I want to talk to Hawke.  The real Hawke."

"I am Hawke, as I've always been Hawke."

"Snap out of it!"

"Isabela!" Merrill tries to drag her away.

"No!" Isabela struggles, but her strength is sapped by the heaviness in her heart.  "She's not gone!" she says to Merrill, plaintive.  "She's still in there!"

Merrill touches Isabela's face, shakes her head.

Hawke looks between them with eyes that are heavy, but heartbreakingly impassive.   "I understand you're expecting something else, but that's all over now.  I was very unhappy before.  Now I am contented."

Varric allows her fingertips to slip from his grasp with nothing but a horrible, choked sort of sound as his farewell.  Merrill has to usher Isabela away, and now there is no buffer between what remains of Hawke and the three who have been utterly unprepared to approach her.

Anders turns away first.  He is already struggling to hold himself together.  He cannot allow Vengeance to reign here.  Not yet.  Aveline must soon follow.  She is crying.  She doesn't know what to say.  Not yet.

Fenris cannot look away.

Hawke's dead eyes fall upon him without intention.  "You must be pleased, Fenris," she says calmly.

His mouth opens, but no sound escapes.

"I'm sure you know as the Templars did that this was what was best.  And what I deserved."

He shakes his head, feels himself taking slow, staggering steps towards her, feels himself falling, sinking, crumbling to his knees.

"You're crying."

'Yes," he breathes.  He sees only her feet now, peeking out from beneath Circle robes.  If he focuses on her feet, on the dirt and scratches and dried blood that remain from her struggle, then he can remember what was and not what is.

She sinks to her knees before him.  He reaches for her hands and she offers them indifferently.  They are scratched up, too, angry red marks, red like the ribbon she tied around his wrist as a sign of her affection.  Signs that she struggled for her life to the very end.

"There's no need to be unhappy for me, Fenris," she says.  "It's all over now."

He looks up into her impassive eyes and vows silently to remember the way they used to burn.  He draws her hands up to his lips and kisses the raised scars on her knuckles.  She does not react at all.

"I am contented now," she says simply.

Fenris shakes his head.  "I'll never believe that," he replies.

"Someone is coming," says Anders, low and restrained, and then they have to go, and they have to leave what remains of Hawke here and stumble forward without her.

_This is the way the world ends._

She was a chaotic leader at best.  Haphazard, and often disastrous.  But they all came to love her so dearly in such a short time, and their loyalty for her drew them together.  And now she is gone, and they are left floundering, consumed by the fire burning unchecked within themselves.

All their dreams, their lofty ideals for change or direction or purpose, are scattered in the wind once more.  Perhaps they hadn't even fully realized how thoroughly they were guided by the strength of her spirit, that ineffable thing which has now been so callously snuffed out.

_This is the way the world ends,_  
_Not with a bang, but with a whimper._


End file.
